


Return Policy

by misscam



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-27
Updated: 2009-02-27
Packaged: 2017-10-17 12:50:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/177028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscam/pseuds/misscam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Bill has no return policy. The universe is not so kind.</i> Love, loss and life blending on Galactica. [Adama/Roslin]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Return Policy

**Author's Note:**

> Through No Exit and Deadlock, scenes I would have liked to have seen. As usual, many great thanks to my beta lyricalviolet.

Return Policy  
By **misscam**

Disclaimer: Not my characters, just my words.

II

Sometimes, Laura thinks there are numbers etched into her skin, just as the photographs in Galactica's memorial hall seem etched into the skin of the ship itself. Galactica's are the dead, hers are the living, and every gain for Galactica is a loss for her.

Lose a number, add a photograph. See the dead, count the living.

She's already taken the Quorum off her board, now she pins pictures to the wall and hopes they are good ones.

It's important they are good ones.

Sometimes, she thinks about her own, pinned to this wall and in company of so many. Maybe it would be Bill who put it up, grief etched into his face, but most likely not. Bill carries the images of the dead in his head, never quite letting go. He'll hold on to her there.

Lee, she thinks. Lee would do it, and find a good picture too.

In the end, she puts up Tom Zarek's picture too, but walks away without looking at it.

II

Laura finds him drinking at his desk when she enters his (their) quarters, and Bill can tell from the look on her face she would rather not. But she says nothing, and listens to his ramblings about Galactica, cracks and Cylon technology to save his ship without comment.

"I told Chief to fix her," he finishes, looking up at her. Her fingers are in his hair, braiding through it gently, and the lines on her face has softened.

"I see," she says quietly, and he wonders if she does. "You could just let her die."

"No," he says. Just that. She nods, her palm against his cheek warm as she leans down.

"You never could," she says, and he knows she is thinking of the first time she was dying and he didn't let her. By Cylon means then too. She survived. Galactica will. He'll live with what it costs him.

"Laura," he says, lifting his hands to her hips as she sits down on his lap and he is kissing her almost desperately. He should brush his teeth – he tries to always, to keep the taste of alcohol from bothering her – but she doesn't pull away or make any sign of being uncomfortable. Rather, she places a hand on his shoulder, tracing his lines. She even hums a little at the back of her throat, a 'mmm' sound he knows as hers so well.

He closes his eyes to it, only opening them again when she stands up. Her face is half in shadow, but he can still see the light in her eyes as she holds out a hand.

"Come," she says softly as he takes it, and he thinks of rest there never seems enough of.

II

Books, Laura thinks dimly, her head tilted slightly backwards, Bill's hands warm on her back and his mouth even warmer against her skin, her body adjusting to the feel of his. It all comes down to books with him.

He gives them, doesn't lend them. He has no return policy. He is still wearing a wedding ring for a woman she is pretty sure he has not loved in a long time. Saul Tigh is a Cylon, and still has William Adama's love and friendship. Galactica holds so much of his life, and he will use the technology he fears and has been used to kill so many of their people rather than let his ship go.

Books. That's how she first read his heart.

(Somewhere in his (their) shelf lies a singed copy of _Searider Falcon_ and she isn't sure who it belongs to anymore; it's been passed between them so many times she's lost count.)

Now she sees it in his eyes as she tilts her head to kiss him; and it breaks her own a little. He holds on; Zak still died from him, Galactica might still fall apart, and she is living on dying time.

Bill has no return policy. The universe is not so kind.

II

In the morning, Laura doesn't comment on his slight hangover, he doesn't say anything about the pills that should be there and both know what the other isn't saying.

He kisses her at the door, she touches the grey in his hair and tells him she'll working with Lee today, just helping out, she won't be that involved, Lee will do the heavy lifiting.

President Laura Roslin, Bill thinks, and kisses her again.

She hasn't quite let go of it yet.

II

In the evening, Bill is sleeping when she finally enters his (their) quarters, she undresses very quietly not to wake him. He doesn't sleep enough, not nearly enough. No one does anymore, she thinks.

They're all so tired, and she takes the couch rather than waking him.

In the end, it's she who wakes when he lifts her up gently, carrying her to his bunk in the dark; she falls asleep with her head against his chest, his heartbeats like a lullaby.

II

Bill can't sleep.

Galactica groans and Laura breathes, and he lies embraced between them; Galactica against his back and Laura's head pressed against his chest. He's learned the movement of both now, how his ship will move in the illusion of being still, and how Laura will speed forward and still always seem to be at his side.

He's long since come to terms with the possessive thought that they are his – not that he owns them, but that they both have taken enough of his life that he can't think of another way to describe it.

They're both sick, and he is feeling it right along with them, as if they're all blending and bleeding into each other.

II

Laura doesn't dream, doesn't have a vision and wakes to the smell of coffee; she still feels tired, as if her bones are not strong enough anymore and are failing her.

II

DRADIS contact and a lost raptor returned, and that's not the only thing that comes back.

When Bill sees Saul kiss Ellen, all he can think of is trouble and history, and how human they are for a couple that isn't.

II

Ellen, Laura considers. So many concerns already and Ellen. There's Galactica, dwindling resources and not enough crew to go around. There's Bill and drinking and Lee and too much righteousness and her body and not enough time. There's no carrot to hold before the Fleet anymore (mustnotthinkofEarthwillnotthinkofEarth) and no planet from scriptures waiting at the end of the stars.

There's Ellen. Saul and Ellen Tigh, and the Six known as Caprica, pregnant.

Children and Cylons, she thinks. Hera. The Cylons were always obsessed with Hera, and so were her visions. Those she shared with Caprica and Athena and she is still not sure what means.

She hasn't even had them for a long time.

There are these visions Laura doesn't have anymore, and she wonders at them again.

II

"We're arming civilians. We're arming _Baltar_ ," Laura says distantly, and she seems to be talking to herself more than him, eyes still on the door where Lee and Baltar walked out.

"Better than Centurions," he counters, and she grimaces lightly. The blanket around her has slipped slightly, and he can't help but correct, leaving a hand on her knee she covers with her own.

She smiles, but there is no warmth in it.

"I don't know what better is anymore," she says.

II

Gain a wife, lose a son, Saul thinks distantly. Love and loss joined at the hip.

He doesn't think very clearly after that.

II

"Liam," Bill tells Laura as she sits down, and she understands even before he goes on. "After William."

Always Bill and Saul, she thinks, and there is no jealousy in the thought. Bill has always had enough love for the whole ship. He makes a family of his crew, with children and brothers and even a sort of wife in her. His (their) family.

"He must be devastated," she says softly. "She must be too. Caprica Six, I mean."

"Losing a child...." he says, and trails off, not looking at her.

Zak, she knows. Kara, too, even if she returned unexplained. Dee. Perhaps even Gaeta, in a way. And all the others whose numbers she's taken off her board and someone has put pictures of in the memorial hall.

"I know," she says, and thinks of Billy.

She does see Bill's quick glance at the bottle on the desk, but she doesn't comment on it. She just stands up, biting down the cough she can feel in her throat. She will not remind him of that. Not now. Not for as long as she can help it.

"Let's go for a walk," she says.

II

"It's already happened, hasn't it?" Bill says, and Laura's 'mmm' seems one of agreement. It has.

Liam. It's not the same as Zak, Saul was right. But it's getting so frakking close. Athena. Hera. Saul. Chief. Cylon pilots in his CAP. Blending.

Pictures of dead Cylons on his walls. Mortal Cylons, learning life only comes once and is only on loan. Return policy. One life. Like humans.

The lines are blurring.

How long until the board counts Cylons too, he wonders, and touches the image of Sharon Valerii.

It took him a long time to stop seeing Boomer in all the Eights. Now that he has managed, Boomer has returned. There's probably irony in that, if he wasn't so tired of it always being the sort of ironies that hurt that he's stopped looking.

Still. It's a good picture, he thinks. It's important they are.

Laura is looking at him, and he doesn't think (refuses to think) of her picture here, just returns her gaze evenly and feels her hand be warm in his.

"What are we doing, Bill?" she asks.

He thinks of Cylons and humans, Galactica and goo, Centurions and Baltar, her and him and a conversation they had a long time ago.

"Surviving," he says.

As long as they can.

II

FIN


End file.
